Ever since I read all of Carl Sagan’s non-fiction books, I’ve been confused by the film, ‘Contact’. It’s based on Sagan’s novel, but it always bothered me that the movie didn’t seem to represent his views on religion vs. the scientific worldview.

“Ellie disgracefully waffles in the face of light-weight theological objections to rationalism — e.g. ‘God is a hell of an engineer.’ Our courageous spokeswoman for the scientific world-view collapses in such exchanges.”